A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent documents or patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all rights whatsoever.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to clocks, watches, and electronic displays.
2. Description of Related Art
a. The Need for an Alternative Time Display Method
Clocks and watches serve (i) a time-keeping function, (ii) a time display function, and (iii) an ornamental/fashion function. Although a number of time display methods have been created over the centuries, only two time display methods are commonly used in modern clocks and watches, namely: (i) the traditional analog clock approach, which provides a minute hand and an hour hand set against a clock face, and (ii) the numerical digit display approach, which provides one or two digits representing the hour to the left of a colon, and two digits to the right of the colon representing the minute, as in the case of “3:52”.
While both of these time display methods can accurately and precisely convey time of day information to an observer, they are both limiting from a design perspective. Numerical digits, no matter how they are dressed up, are ultimately still just numerical digits. Incorporated into calculator watches, VCRs, mobile phones, and many other devices, numerical digit displays are highly functional but almost as highly repetitive and unattractive.
Meanwhile, the analog clock display is a little more aesthetically pleasing but no less repetitive. Whether six millimeters long or six feet long, a minute hand is still a minute hand, and it functions just like every other minute hand in the world, from the minute hand on a luxury watch to the minute hand built into a giant clock tower. Every analog clock design, therefore, must be built to accommodate the same basic features, namely, rotating clock hands.
As a result of these limitations, the time display function served by modern clocks and watches often clashes with the fashion and ornamental function. This tension can be most easily observed in the field of luxury watches, where designers, struggling to make the same old time display method look new, produce gold and diamond watches that are beautiful —but impossible to read.
What is needed, therefore, is a new time display method that conveys time of day information as accurately and precisely as the two major conventional time display methods yet suffers from fewer limitations from a fashion design or industrial design perspective.
b. Prior Offerings of Alternative Time Display Methods
Recognizing the limitations of the two major time display methods, modern inventors have sought to offer alternatives. Each of these offerings also suffers from its own inherent limitations. The limitations typically fall into one of the following categories: (i) time is displayed accurately and precisely, but reading or learning to read the display is prohibitively difficult; (ii) time is displayed accurately, but unacceptably imprecisely; (iii) time is displayed in the traditional analog or digital method, but “a twist” is added that makes for a difference without any apparent advantage.
Time display methods and devices in the first category include the following:
Bik, U.S. Pat. No. 5,228,013 to Bik, provides a colorful “clock-painting” device and method which conveys time information by electronic pulses, wherein the number of pulses indicates time quadrants and other variables which, taken together, can be deciphered to reveal the time of day. However, as the inventor admits in the disclosure itself, the time display method disclosed therein requires a “time-consuming data extraction process.” The same criticism can be leveled at other alternative methods in this category, such as Cordova, U.S. Pat. No. 5,526,327 (providing a time display method and device in which container-like areas fill over time to indicate the passing of hours, minutes and seconds) and Lyon, U.S. Pat. No. 5,896,348 (providing a method and device whereby time information is conveyed through groups of binary indicators).
These offerings have also tended to lack “backward compatibility,” meaning, they provide no mechanism through which users can leverage their existing time-telling skills.
What is needed, therefore, is an alternative time display method and device that is easier to learn and to use than prior alternative offerings.
In the second category are offerings such as:
A web designer named or working for “Ralf Einhorn” has created a computer-animated image that changes color continually, moving gradually in time through the color spectrum. This designer has published a single web page that displays said image as a “clock.” Though this publication appeared after the filing dates of the above provisional patent applications, this image merits discussion, since it serves to highlight the effectiveness of the color-to-hour invention. As the Einhorn web page and image show, such gradual color change may be an interesting aesthetic idea, but it is severely deficient as a time indicator: the image, black at midnight, turns red by about 3:00 a.m. and remains such til about 7:00 a.m. Thereafter, the image gradually turns to orange, then to yellow to green to blue by about 5:00 p.m., as per the color spectrum, and then turns to black again by midnight. Thus, under Einhorn, even a keen observer would be unable to tell current time with any more precision than about a four-hour window. Meanwhile, Einhorn provides no mechanism for the indication of minutes whatsoever.
To summarize, the color spectrum (discussed below) does not offer enough discretely recognizable intervals to indicate the 1440 minutes in a day or to enable the present invention. Moreover, as Einhorn demonstrates, imperceptibly small changes of degree along a continuum do not serve as precise time of day indicators. Hours of the day change by clearly differentiated steps occurring at precise intervals, not by indefinite motion along a continuum.
What is needed, therefore, is an exact, stepwise indicator of hours combined with a precise indicator of minutes, not a vague approximation of the time of day that provides no distinction between hours and minutes.
In the third category are offerings such as:
Graves, U.S. Pat. No. 6,198,698, provides a device in which time information is conveyed by way of a pie chart-like pattern that corresponds to the motion of a minute hand and illumination of a digit representing the hour of day. Clearly mimicking the function of a traditional analog clock, the Graves device provides a difference without an apparent advantage.
What is needed, therefore, if an alternative time display method is to be employed at all, is identifiable advantages over the conventional digital or analog methods.
c. Other Prior Art in which Color is Used
The present invention offers a time display system which meets the above requirements through an innovation called a “color-to-hour matrix”, through which color serves as an absolute, stand-alone, step-wise hour indicator.
By contrast, color is irrelevant in the conventional time display methods: a black minute hand conveys the same information as a gold one. Color usage in clocks therefore typically falls into the following categories: (i) strictly ornamental usage, by far the largest category; (ii) teaching aids for children; and (iii) indication of supplementary information, such as time zone, elapsed
time (as opposed to time of day), etc.
Ornamental, decorative usage of color in clocks includes:
Thousands of “novelty” clocks, too numerous to mention here, which are in the shape of animals, people, sports equipment, etc., but display the time using a conventional method. Also in this category are some patented offerings, such as, Vole, U.S. Pat. No. 4,845,689 (clock made to look like a traffic light with red, amber, and green lenses); Hadany, U.S. Pat. No. 4,034,554 (rotating color cylinders change orientation causing continuous change in color of display).
Devices using color to convey supplementary information include:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,006,588 to McMahon et al. (time dial divided into colored areas ranging in length from one to three hours, each area representing a portion of a child's day, e.g., lunchtime); U.S. Pat. No. 4,028,876 to Delatorre (two compounds react to change color to indicate elapsed time over the course of one to 30 days); U.S. Pat. No. 4,702,615 to Havel (variable colors used to indicate relationship of current time to certain time limits); and the U.S. Pat. No. 5,638,341 to Amano (colors used to represent periods of the day related to traditional Indian medicine).
Teaching aids for teaching children how to tell time include:
Brooks, U.S. Pat. No. 3,967,389 employs color to help children understand a minute and hour hand; see also, Grimes, U.S. Pat. No. 4,219,943; Bradt, U.S. Pat. No. 6,354,841; Massaro, U.S. Pat. No. 4,885,731; Totten, U.S. Pat. No. 4,124,945.
The Totten device is the most relevant of the teaching aids because it provides a circular clock face divided into twelve different-colored segments. However, this multicolored clock face serves only as a backdrop for standard analog hands. As such, neither this clockface itself nor the colors on it do or can serve to indicate the time of day.
In contrast, the color dials in the present invention do serve as time indicators. This function is only made possible by the intermittent, relative motion of the color dial combined with the hiding of eleven of the twelve color segments, which novel mechanics are neither taught by nor possible under Totten.
Meanwhile, colors are used to convey information in devices unrelated to time display. For instance, colors are used instead of words in traffic lights, where the red means “stop,” and green means “go.” Ambient Devices, a company, makes objects that change color gradually according to the performance of the stock market or other variables.
Note that the stepwise color change of a stop light —providing three distinct colors that mean three distinct things —has proven very effective in society at large. One can imagine, however, that if this indicator were gradual, i.e., a stoplight gradually changed from green to red, the resulting confusion would be quite dangerous, since no one would know exactly when to stop and when to go. Similarly, as the failure of the Einhorn approach demonstrates, the precision of the present color-to-hour system would be impossible using gradual color changes rather than the disclosed stepwise color changes.
d. Overcoming the Shortcomings in Prior Art
When white light is passed through a prism, it separates into the basic “rainbow colors”: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. These seven colors are not enough discreetly recognizable colors to enable a one-to-one color-to-hour matrix such as that disclosed herein. But by adding other light phenomena which humans perceive as distinctly recognizable colors but which do not appear in the pure color spectrum, such as brown, black, gray and so on, a group of twelve identifiable colors that can be distinguished from each other by most human beings is produced, thereby enabling the disclosed color-to-hour matrix.
Once a particular sequence of color-to-hour assignments has been established for this color-to-hour matrix, this information makes possible an entirely novel time display method that eliminates the traditional hour hand altogether in favor of displaying a color that in and of itself is sufficient to indicate the exact current hour of the day.
This new method is combined with traditional, color-independent methods of conveying minute information so that no more learning is necessary for the new display method to be effectively used. Such combining of a stand-alone, exact indicator of hours solely by color with a color-independent indicator of minutes is itself also an entirely novel time display method.
Alternately, the new method of conveying hour information is combined with new methods of conveying minute information, thereby allowing greater latitude in terms of fashion and industrial design than prior methods allow.
Thus, an alternative time display method is achieved to meet the requirements stated above. Myriad devices illustrating the flexibility of this approach are disclosed.
e. The Trend Toward User Configurability
Information technology users have grown to expect more and more ability to customize the tools with which they work. Desktop, laptop, Internet and handheld computer environments all offer a number of user preferences that can be immediately changed by a user at will.
Meanwhile, typical clocks and watches are designed to have a single, fixed appearance. For instance, if a user purchases a gold watch with two black hands, she cannot easily change the look of her watch, e.g., exchange the black hands for gold hands, unless she happens to be a jeweler. Ideally, however, a user would be able to change the way her clock or watch looks quickly and conveniently at will, e.g., to change her watch to match her daily clothing selection.
At least one prior attempt to make a user-configurable clock appears in Bodet, U.S. Pat. No. 3,972,179. What is needed therefore is a way of allowing users to change the appearance —colors, textures, shapes, etc. —of the displays of their watches and clocks easily.
f. Other Prior Art Incorporated into or Related to the Present Invention
Other prior art used by or related to the present invention includes “anadigi” clocks, in which both the digital and the analog methods of time display are included in the same device (e.g., Besson, U.S. Pat. No. 4,413,915; Burdet, U.S. Pat. No. 4,320,484); timekeeping mechanisms, such as quartz and mechanical movements; “atomic watches”, which receive radio transmissions from the U.S. national atomic clock in Fort Collins, Colo., so that they remain in almost perfect synchronization with official United States time, such as the digital “Atomic Watch” from LaCrosse Technology; “jump hour” watches (e.g., Vuille, U.S. Pat. No. 4,259,735), some of which eliminate the hour hand altogether in favor of a rotating dial inside the watch which turns intermittently at the top of each hour and displays the current hour through a window in the watch face; watches that include a date function, wherein a rotating dial indicates date and month information (e.g., Watanabe, U.S. Pat. No. 4,228,644); means of transferring, exchanging uploading, downloading, and synchronizing information between a portable device and a local or remote computer via the Internet by establishing a data transfer link (infrared, USB cable, docking station, etc.), as in the case of synchronizing a Palm PDA and a Yahoo! online address book, via IntelliSync software (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 6,304,881 to Halim); liquid crystal displays, light-emitting displays, touch-sensitive displays, and other flat-panel displays, both color and black and white; software and systems which allow a user to customize the way information is displayed, such as the case of a user setting a color scheme for her My Yahoo! account (see, e.g., http://my.yahoo.com); software that enables a graphical image to be displayed by an electronic flat-panel display, and which allows such images to change in size, shape and other characteristics, such as Macromedia Flash animations; devices which trigger electronic or mechanical events to occur at a particular time of day, such as a clock alarm or an in-home safety device that turns lights on and off at particular times of day; air and water compressors and pumps; aquariums, hourglasses, and other containers; odometers and the gear mechanisms used therein to cause intermittent motion of a dial or drum; light projectors and colored gels for use therewith, as in the case of theatrical spotlights (e.g., Leon, U.S. Pat. No. 4,232,359); digital compasses, which can be carried or worn by a user, and which output digital directional information in degrees ranging from 0 through 359; other environmental sensors, which output digital information pertaining to latitude, longitude, tilt, pitch, yaw, motion, and light intensity (see e.g., SDL30 digital level from Instrument Sales; DLM2 digital light meter from Sherman Instruments; PDC803 digital compass from Smart Home; Bosch DLE30 Plus digital distance meter; gyroscopic sensors for use with data processing systems, such as the GyroMouse from Gyration, Inc.); GPS receivers, including those which plug-in to PDAs or are included in other portable devices (e.g., GeoDiscovery's Geode GPS); operating systems, which allow a user to switch from one software program to another; clocks which display zodiac calendar information (Frank, U.S. Pat. No. 4,435,795; Strader, U.S. Pat. No. 5,197,043); timekeeping devices that include a compass or other environmental sensor in communication with a microprocessor for performing certain calculations automatically (Doulton, U.S. Pat. No. 4,512,667); database management software, such as that produced by Oracle or FileMaker; HTML forms processors, Web browsers, Web servers, client/server systems; power supplies, including portable batteries, wall outlets, and automatic or self-winding watches; and perpetual calendar timepieces and gears (e.g., Groothuis, U.S. Pat. No. 4,427,300).